SZA ft. Kendrick Lamar – 30 for 30
Throw some [5.56]s on that…

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[5.56]
Julian Axelrod: It’s borderline blasphemous to use the sample and opening from Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s” (one of the best songs of all time) but SZA and Kendrick come pretty close to clearing that impossibly high bar. If anything, the beat’s nostalgic warmth unlocks a looseness between them that’s missing from their other collaborations, which often sag under the weight of their own importance. “Doves in the Wind” may be a better song, but it doesn’t have Kendrick singing, “fooooosball.”
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Claire Davidson: What’s the point of “30 for 30”? I’d hazard a guess that it’s meant to frame SZA and Kendrick Lamar as each other’s jaded ex-lovers, but the verses are so generalized that constructing any kind of narrative seems futile. That then poses the question of why this song even needed to be a duet, given how their storied history as collaborators feels so inessential to the final product, to say nothing of the gauzy beat that saps both performers of any energy. Also, the lyric “say you on your cycle, but he on his period too” certainly wouldn’t be the first time Lamar has conflated supposedly female anatomy with weakness—I’m reminded of the “other vaginal option” punchline that appears on “Not Like Us”—but it’s even more egregious in a song credited to SZA, who is currently one of the most prolific women in the music industry. I’m tempted to say I’m docking a point for that line alone, but that would imply I had strong feelings toward the song in the first place.
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Jonathan Bradley: “You go to the beauty shop and get in that chair/Your man in there gettin’ his hair fixed,” quipped Millie Jackson in her 1977 song “All the Way Lover.” “He cuter than you, huh?” Kendrick has similar men in mind on this SZA song: “They cuter than you, oh?/Say you on your cycle but he on his period too, huh?” Whatever, Kenny; it’s telling that even when he’s being obnoxious, he exerts a far greater presence on this rote R&B traditionalism than the lead artist does. Allegedly she’s present, but on the “30 for 30” roll call she tellingly recedes before 2020s Kendrick, Switch’s 1979 recording of “I Call Your Name,” and even the ghost of 2007 Rich Boy.
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Dave Moore: Kendrick Lamar and SZA work well together. He needs a light counterbalance that isn’t directly competing with his voice, which is authoritative in one sense but at a sonic level is a little too mellow and conversational to compete with another big voice on the track. (He worked as a feature on Beyoncé’s “Freedom” because the song cleanly cordons off his verse.) Here, though, I think the choice to let both Kendrick and SZA go modal together keeps them both in a fog and the song never finds a foothold, but not in an interesting way (they have too much personality to make the fog itself interesting).
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Mark Sinker: They stick with the cryptic, with this roman-à-clef shit that amuses them as much as it baffles everyone else, and I suppose to be fair cryptic is sometimes my high mode as well and I’m fine with it (baffled but fine). Their voices tag-team very nicely.
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Alfred Soto: The mewl of the electric piano augurs dull shit. The professional anonymity of the principals does not disappoint.
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Katherine St. Asaph: Kendrick won the Drake beef so hard that now he even sounds like Drake. SZA’s charm has to be around here somewhere, right?
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Yet another indignity in Drake’s century of humiliation — Kendrick has seen fit not just to celebrate his victory in this beef on the biggest stages in music but to steal Drake’s one remaining niche, delivering a lover-man guest verse full of questionable sexual politics and corny jokes. Worse yet: he’s actually good at it, playing the moderator to SZA’s Twitch streamer (Doja Cat must be pissed) with a charm that his nemesis hasn’t displayed in a half decade or more.
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Nortey Dowuona: I don’t know what happened to make Kendrick tap into his latent Ne-Yo/The-Dream, but we do need one, and if they’re going around being assholes, let’s have Kendrick replace them too. szaonthedot when?
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